I haven't read all the small print yet, but it sounds like the FDIC wants your bank to tell the government if you do anything non-standard(to be defined by your bank) in your bank account. An example could be the depositing of cash from the sale of your car. This deposit could be questioned thereby requiring you to explain(with documentation) its source. Even more paperwork to keep track of

• Proposed Regulation (12 CFR 326) Full text of the Federal Register notice inviting comments on the proposed regulation requiring banks to develop Know Your Customer programs.
• Full text of the Financial Institution Letter from the FDIC to insured banks and savings institutions describing proposed requirements for Know Your Customer programs.
• FDIC press release on the proposed regulation that would require banks to have a Know Your Customer program.
• Comments@fdic.gov --Electronic mailbox for sending comments on the FDIC's Know Your Customer proposed regulation. This comment period ends March 8, 1999

CNET NEWS.COM - EPA backpedals on online data release. Amid pressure from national security forces, the Environmental Protection Agency has scrapped plans to post online "worst-case" accident scenarios for about 66,000 chemical manufacturers around the country.

Mandated by Congress to make the chemical companies' risk-management plans public, the EPA intended to put them online early next year.

CNET NEWS.COM - Complaint: GoTo favors sister firms. An Internet entrepreneur who made a bid for top billing in results from the GoTo.com shopping search engine funded in part by Bill Gross' idealab contends that GoTo.com gave preferential treatment to a competing auto site that Gross also has invested in.

CNET NEWS.COM - IBM sharpens "eyes" of digital cameras.

CNET NEWS.COM - FCC assessing local telco competition.

Political News from Wired News - Strong Rules for Strong Crypto. The Clinton administration will increase pressure on other nations to restrict data-scrambling software, according to US Commerce Department undersecretary William Reinsch.

Patented technology profiles Net surfers. Be Free today will announce the issuance of a patent covering automated profiling of Web users for targeted advertising. The patent is the latest in a string of recently granted e-commerce patents that promise to create either profits or problems for firms doing business online, as patent holders spar with potential infringers over the use of new but already common technologies.

The integrity of such a system is only as good as the legal protections available to the user," said David Sobel, lead counsel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center(EPIC). "In other words, if this assurance of anonymity is contained in a privacy policy that is subject to change at any time, as many such policies are, then there is a real question as to how protective of privacy this system is."

Marketers and Net Activists Reach Agreement on Spam. Internet activists and direct marketers, who have been fighting for years over whether and how states and the federal government should regulate the growing use of unsolicited commercial e-mail, said on Monday that they had reached an agreement that they hope will produce consensus legislation and industry rules governing the contentious issue of Internet marketing. Who knows maybe we will finally have a chance of managing this problem.

MacWEEK: Why Unix is cool.